Fun in the summertime!

Here is a quick summertime photo blog!

tye-dye - we had a blast tye-dying shirts, hats, socks, etc on Memorial Day!

horseback riding - a neighbor owns a horse back riding facility about a half hour away, and offered a free day to the community. It was a blast! Ashley had never even seen a horse, much less been on one, and she loved it!

birthday - Ashley turned three, she loved having a party this year - picking pink cakepops as her treat. My oldest stepdaughter has perfected cake pop making, and we had gluten free strawberry lemonade cake pops! She loved opening presents from family and friends and having the happy birthday song sung to her!

fire truck - our local library has a weekly story time and one day the firemen came to visit. We got to sit in both a fire truck and an ambulance, and they read the kids stories.

icecream - or in Ashley's case, sorbet, as she's not only gluten free but dairy free. Poor kid takes after me.

swimming - and enjoying nachos. I had to shower her off before she could go back in the pool, she was covered in icky fake cheese.

butterflies and spiders! - we are fortunate to be in colorado and not far from the butterfly pavilion. We have a season pass and go often. This was Ashley's first time holding Rosie, the tarantula. She did great!

And of course, the always expected back-to-school photo. Fifth grade, second grade, preschool. highschool freshman not pictured. Last year, the elementary kids were homeschooling, so there was no "back to school" fanfare.

Happy Schooling :-)

Last "Tot" School Post, we're preschoolers now!

Hi! Ashley is three and now officially a preschooler! We're doing preschool at home three or four days a week for about an hour.

This post was our last tot-school theme last may. We did two weeks of transportation activities!

Photos:

First Row - transportation books, tracing stencils, three piece puzzles

Second Row - lining up cars by color, number train, rolling cars in playdough (making tracks!)

Third Row - coloring trains, completed train art, smallest to largest busses

Fourth Row - three part cards and train toy, Letter puzzles, tracing the airplane paths.

We also did a short pirate theme in June - just two days. The only picture I took is now my new header. We were counting jewels and coins, and placed stickers in the boxes.

Next week I will do a summer recap and get going on preschool posts. We have done four weeks of preschool already!

linking up with TotSchool!

The Farm

This week we looked at Farm animals. We live out in the country, in a neighborhood, but there isn't much around us, so we see farms often. We had fun doing a few farm related things this week. We had a short week this week because of other plans, but we still fit in a few things.

I didn't ever get a picture of the books we used - but here is a picture of Ashley reading on her farm blanket. I made this blanket for her last year.

Coloring shapes with marker...

Which were cut out and turned into a tractor the next day!

Circling which animal is different, and drawing lines. I helped with the zigzag line, but she did the straight one by herself. This is something we've only started doing these last couple of weeks.

Separating plants and animals. I had no idea that ashley knew the difference, but she got every one correct! I put the glue on and she pasted them down.

How many spots does a cow have? I printed this on cardstock and put it in a page protector, and we used dry erase markers to draw spots, and counted them!

We did a few things I didn't get pictures of, we have some farm animal magnets we played with, and lots of coloring!

the pages we used came from 2 teaching mommies

We did one more thing I want to share, painting! We went out in the grass. She wasn't a fan at first, but ended up with a very purple canvas!

after it dried, we added white handprints, and I painted her name underneath them. And dated the back :-) I'll get a picture of it for next week's blog!

This is linked up with Tot School!

Rainbows

This week we focused on the colors of the rainbow. Ashley already knows these, but we had some fun reviewing and doing some color mixing and other activities :-)

Books we used.

Making a rainbow book. I stapled the sheets together in order, and she just colored on each page.

We have the book "I love colors" about a dog who plays in paint. Ashley loves this book, and loved the coloring sheet where she colored her own dog. from 1+1+1.

Paintbrush sort file folder game from confessions of a homeschooler. Laminated (with packing tape because for some reason that is easier to me) and put together. Ashley really enjoyed this, but I never got a picture of her in action.

Rainbow from 1+1+1. I printed two, and I colored mine while she did. She was watching me very closely! She did a great job!

Rainbow dot page from 1+1+1. We used stickers on it, and we counted them lots of times!

We used our discovery toys bugs again this week, and sorted them by color onto paper plates.

Discovery toys game. You roll the "dice" and pull a card from the color you roll and do the activity.

Dry erase markers on a homemade board.

I made these sheets last year for Ashley, and I printed them out again for her. It was really fun to watch the difference in her skills a year later! She definitely attempts to color things in rather than just scribble.

Our favorite this week - marble painting! I wish I'd gotten pictures of the process rather than just them finished, but, I was a mess of paint! We did one red/yellow/orange, one red/blue/purple, and one yellow/blue/green. She loved mixing the paints up and watching the marbles roll! I love how these turned out, and I want to frame them together in our "classroom" and keep them up forever! Linking up with Totschool. Visit the pages and get lots of great ideas!

A week on Counting

This past week was spent on counting. Ashley had learned to count awhile ago (up to fourteen) but didn't connect it with anything, so I wanted to work on it this week. She did a great job and can now easily count/match items up to five, and is doing pretty well with 6-10. Here are some of the books we used this week.

When we read books, we used puff balls to count along with the book. Here is a page from "Five Little Ducks."

We got the next sheet pictured from confessions of a homeschooler. She has lots of free printables. I printed multiple sets. One I printed on cardstock, and laminated whole (in sheet protectors taped closed) for Ashley to use her bugs (from discovery toys) to count.

The next one I printed out the first page (1-5) cut out each one, and laminated with packing tape. We added puffy ladybug stickers to each one, and spent a lot of time putting them in order from 1 to 5.

The third set I printed on regular paper and we used stickers to put in each square and counted them.

This sheet came from 1+1+1=1. We printed two copies, one to put stickers on and one to cut into cards and use with little gems (under supervision of course)

Some other things we did this week: Number Tracing. I think this was a 1+1+1=1 page also.

Counting puff balls next to little foam numbers.

Using our "Melissa and Doug" Number mat, counting one side, and coloring and counting the other side.

A few more things that I don't have pictures of... We have a sesame street video called "the number game" which we watched several times. Also, we counted EVERYTHING. food, trees, cars, whatever. Ashley learned so much this week and we had a great time! See you next week. This post is linked up to Totschool!

Chicka Chicka BOOM BOOM

I love the book Chicka Chicka BOOM BOOM, so we had to do a week on it. There are so many projects you can do with it, depending on your child's age. Here are some of the things we did.

Read the book - obviously. many many times. I have most of it memorized!

Watched a video of the book that I found on you tube.

I made a coconut tree using a coloring sheet I had from my college teaching days, and I colored it and used packing tape to put it on our dryerase magnet board. Then Ashley had fun having the letters climb the tree!

I had Ashley color a copy of the same tree to use for her lapbook.

She watercolor painted five smaller trees (I colored the trunks with marker) for her lapbook.

Lapbook cover I printed from online somewhere, if you recognize it, please let me know so I can link it.

Inside the lapbook. I cut out the trees and we glued them. We glued sets of coconuts (1-5) on to the trees.

I made the numbers, cut them out, and used packing tape to make them square, so they are easy to pick up, but see through. The numbers climb the correct tree!

On the back, we glued ashley's colored tree. I made the letters of her name the same way as I made the number cards, so that her name can climb the tree. There are storage envelopes on both pages for the letters/numbers to be stored in.

She loved that it spelled her name!

Tree made from a paper towel tube. I cut the leaves out and attached them. Ashley helped by putting the alphabet stickers on the tree.

The other tree we did, but it was too hard for ashley. There were holes poked in the tube for the feathers to go in, and the pompoms are glued on top as the coconuts.

What a fun week!

This post is linked up with TOT School. Check them out!!!